3-053-544 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Castellani Collection in the British Museum - the Miser, (Roman comedy), 1873. 'The recent purchase of the Castellani collection of art-antiquities by the trustees of the British Museum has added to the public property of this kind some things of considerable value for their beauty or curiosity...Among the minor terra-cottas...[is] a unique set of figures of Roman actors, the miser, the glutton, the parasite, and the thief, which were conventional types of character in Roman comedy. These four terra-cotta figures stand from six to eight or nine inches high. Their aspect is ludicrous enough, as is shown by our Engravings'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.